Thinking Aloud

20112010

I really don’t know if you have seen the Billboard wishing our National Athletes to the on-going ASIAN Games displayed along the NLEX Viaduct (south bound). It has a banner that states, “Quest For Glory”. How I wish that the said Billboard could have been displayed along EDSA. At present, we have garnered two (2) gold medals for Billiards and Bowling. With Athletics Events to start tomorrow, I hope our team Philippines would be able to add more gold medals on the track and field events.

Is it true that our National Dragon Boat Team was not allowed to join the Team Philippines in the ASIAN Games because of an allegation of a top POC official that our team is using sports-banned substances or doping? I wonder if our athletes were clinically tested to determine if the allegation is true. Our boys, being consistently winning world competitions, missed an opportunity to win Gold Medals for the Dragon Boat events as it went to the Indonesian Dragon Boat Team. I hope this is not a case of the so-called, “crab mentality” among us. “Sayang yong tatlong Gold Medals!”

I decided to have a short run along the UNILAB Run route this morning and I was happy to observe that there was a lot of retired Generals participating in the 10K Run. I’ve seen more soldiers in formation, jogging in cadence, as they finished the shorter distance run. This is a part of their training/preparation as the Chief of Staff of the AFP revived the competition among the AFP Armed Services called, “Battalion Run”.

If you have time, you can witness the “AFP Battalion Run” Competition as each group finishes its run in front of the GHQ Grandstand at Camp Aguinaldo on or about 6:00 AM of December 12, 2010. Four teams will be competing for the much-coveted Chief of Staff Cup. I’ve been a past Battalion Commander for the Philippine Army Team on this competition Run and the Army was declared Champion for two consecutive years. This competition is open to the public.

After running for 3 kilometers this morning, I saw a running friend from Mindanao who was participating in the UNILAB 21K Run. I decided to run with him on his last 8 kilometers. In our conversation, I found out that he was trying to beat his last PR time and would like to register a finish time of sub-2-hour. I had to give more intensity to my run for my friend to be forced to exert more effort. I was surprised that he could run fast, too! Well, he was bombarded with lots of words of encouragement during our run. He was able to know some “tips” too! In the end, I was happy to see him raising his two arms as he crossed the finish line. He finished his run in 1:58:++hours! Good job, Francis!

Tomorrow will be another road race at the UNILAB 32K Run. I really don’t have much expectation on this run but finishing this race in 3 hours would be a nice evaluation on the extent of my running/training progress in preparation for another ultra run in the future.